France bans video of people with Down’s syndrome smiling

The French State Counsel said that people with Down's syndrome smiling was "inappropriate"

The French State Counsel has rejected an appeal by people with Down's syndrome and their friends to lift the ban on broadcasting the "Dear Future Mom" video on French television.

The video features a number of young people with Down's syndrome from around the world telling people about their lives. It was produced in 2014 to celebrate World Down Syndrome Day, and aimed to reassure mothers with a prenatal diagnosis of the condition.

The ban on the video was originally imposed by the French Broadcasting Counsel. The State Counsel said that allowing people with Down's syndrome to smile was "inappropriate" because it was "likely to disturb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different personal life choices".

Unborn children can now be seen in 3D virtual reality

Virtual reality images of the baby at 26 weeks after combining ultrasound and MRI scans. Image: Radiological Society of North America

A ground-breaking new scanning technology is allowing mothers and fathers to meet their unborn children in three dimensional virtual reality.

The technique works by merging ultrasound imagery with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which scans segments of the womb and baby to build a 3D model which can be brought to life by using a virtual reality headset.

Scientists say that as well as helping parents to bond with their baby, the technique could be useful in picking up problems, such as obstructions in the airways, which would allow preparations for emergency surgery to be made when the baby was born.

Pope Francis extends permission for priests to absolve abortion

The Pope has declared that priests throughout the world will continue to have the right to forgive the sin of a procured abortion.

In an apostolic letter, he said "I henceforth grant to all priests, in virtue of their ministry, the faculty to absolve those who have committed the sin of procured abortion. The provision I had made in this regard, limited to the duration of the Extraordinary Holy Year, is hereby extended, notwithstanding anything to the contrary".

He went on to say "I wish to restate as firmly as I can that abortion is a grave sin, since it puts an end to an innocent life. In the same way, however, I can and must state that there is no sin that God's mercy cannot reach and wipe away when it finds a repentant heart seeking to be reconciled with the Father."

Previously, only bishops and special confessors could absolve penitents of abortion and lift the excommunication incurred, although priests in Britain and the US had already been granted these faculties.

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Comments (3)

Rita Joseph

22 November 2016, 7:44pm

Down’s syndrome abortions must be treated as human rights failures.‘Choice’ is no excuse for prejudice. Decisions to abort a child because she/he has Down’s syndrome are to be treated under international human rights law not as idiosyncratic, personal choices but as human rights failures.This is an accumulative crime: so many individual decisions made on eugenic grounds accumulate into a widespread or systematic attack on the group, a crime against humanity facilitated by official government policies and programmes and condoned by domestic courts.Politicians, judges and others have failed to foresee the reprehensible growth in public prejudice against the survivors.The growing of prejudice is an unintended consequence of the emphasis on the “choice” to prevent births to this group. The apparent popularity (96%) of this discriminatory and deeply offensive “choice” impacts gravely on the survivors. It is difficult to live confidently and comfortably in a society where some 96% of mothers make the “informed choice” to prevent births of their children explicitly and openly because their children have been identified to have the same condition that the survivors are now living with.

ANN FARMER

22 November 2016, 7:50pm

The video could help parents avoid the same tragic mistake as those who have aborted unborn babies with Down's. Is the French government afraid that the latter will bring a legal action because they did not give properly informed consent to those abortions? One can only hope so.

Paul Ferraby

26 November 2016, 7:29pm

For thirty five years I worked and shared my life with disabled adults and impaired sighted people, I married my wife who taught handycapped children, shared my three children with a community of mixed sighted and sight impaired friends every day was full to bursting with good memories and my boys are better people for the experience.